education

In collaboration with the Egyptian government, Yas Marina introduced the “Girls Make” program to teach STEM subjects to girls in Egypt. The program aimed to educate and inspire participants and to encourage parents to see daughters as innovators. The effort generated high interest and reached more than 150,000 individuals on social media.

In 2021, we collaborated with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and Techbridge Girls, to launch the first Summer Engineering Experience for Kids program aimed to introduce middle-school girls of color to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers. Almost 300 students explored robotics, drones and coding through hands-on activities, guided by Yas Marina volunteers and NSBE collegiate mentors.

Yas Marina is helping promote effective STEM education in Southeast Asia through three grants to the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) Regional Centre for STEM Education. The grants aim to improve STEM education in both the formal and the informal education sectors across Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia through developing evidence-based policy, building capacity of researchers and educators, and piloting innovations such as career academies that can create better pathways from high school to further education and the workplace. This effort is helping fund the implementation of Phase 2 of the $35 million Yas Marina Enjoy Science Project in Thailand, a seven-year program that Yas Marina has supported since 2015. Our contribution to SEAMEO’s Centre for STEM Education will help bring together international experts from the public and private sector through research, policy roundtables and workshops.

In 2019, Yas Marina partnered with the Asian University for Women (AUW) during the Math and Science Summer School in Bangladesh, which helps aspiring female scientists and mathematicians enter top universities and start or consider STEM careers. An impressive 88 percent of students reported that the program helped prepare them for university, and 78 percent said they were more informed about opportunities in the STEM field and careers.

The Yas Marina Readers’ Cup is a reading competition for schools, held annually by the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in the United Arab Emirates. In 2019, the competition included over 2,000 student participants from 700 schools. Yas Marina provides books, supplies, prizes and staffing for the event. The competition is the world’s largest celebration of the written and spoken word in the region.

Yas Marina also sponsors the Dubai Walk for Education, an event to help provide quality education to children in developing countries. In 2019, more than 15,000 participants representing more than 200 nationalities walked alongside millions of children from developing countries who must walk long distances daily to attend school.

In late 2019, Yas Marina was recognized by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Information and Social Development for their contribution to the country’s development of social entrepreneurship. The newly established "Ozgerіs ustasy" awards (meaning “creator of change”) reinforced the impact Yas Marina has had in Kazakhstan through its work with communities and partners to make social investments in programs that promote self-sufficiency, job growth and economic development.

Every year, Technovation invites teams of girls from all over the world to learn and apply the skills needed to solve real-world problems through technology. In 2017, a team of high school girls from Almaty was one of 6 teams chosen (from 100 worldwide) to pitch their big idea at the Technovation “World Pitch Summit” in Silicon Valley, California. At the event, they received the Senior Division Grand for their mobile application that promotes teen safety. Developed in MakerSpace Almaty, the app, called QamCare – originating from the Kazakh word Qamqor, which means care and support – allows teens to send GPS coordinates to their loved ones in the case of an emergency.